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Series: Local USA

Related: Episodes

Sowing the Seeds of Change... planting ideas for sustainability and self-sufficiency. You might think of it as a Midwest rust belt town, but community gardeners in Flint, Michigan are undergoing a variety of projects and planting the seeds of hope for economic revitalization. From green belts to green thumbs -- a couple works with children to hone their martial arts and gardening skills; and two women toil with the local Flint government to get their garden growing.

WORLD

Living the life! Whether it's in the cozy confines or your own home, or venturing out to find your calling in the big wide world - four subjects in pursuit of their dreams. An array of Airstream enthusiasts in Colorado have their own rules for the road; an unlikely roper from Lafayette, Louisiana hopes to lasso himself a winner; a Brooklyn, New York collector with an eye for the unusual finds beauty in found objects and a decorated war veteran returns to pursue his gridiron goals at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Drive Like A Girl follows New York's champion all-girls robotics team, The Iron Maidens, just one year after they beat more than 60 male-dominated teams in a regional competition. Though they advanced to the national stage in Atlanta, Ga., they lost before winning it all. Now, they've returned for another shot at the title. They had six weeks to design, program and build a robot alongside their brother team and one of their competitors, the Sciborgs. The struggles they face reveal what it takes to be a group of girls excelling at a boys' game and their successes are a glimpse at the changing roles of females in science and technology.

Utah is not exactly the first place you think of when talking about alcohol & liquor. But since the early days of prohibition, "The Beehive State" has a unique foray into distilling spirits. We retrace Utah's fight for and against alcohol with a look at the characters keeping it alive today.

An uplifting meditation on death and dying with stories that prepares us for the journey. An embalmer in Toledo, Ohio prepares a deceased person with the precision and attention of an artist; a dying Brooklyn woman prepares for her final journey with dignity, grace and a dinner party; a teenage hospice volunteer shares advice from his patients and his experience growing up amidst a landscape of violence and death in Brooklyn, New York; and observations from an urban Memphis, Tennessee philosopher.

Three stories question the limits of any disability: the loving marriage of two intellectually-challenged individuals in New York City; a volunteer program that introduces unlikely candidates to surfing on the North Shore of Hawaii; and a blind North Carolina hiker sets out to climb the Appalachian Trail.

We get social, with social media! Finding the people using social media to change the world. The Chicago painting duo, who use Twitter to reward treasure hunters; documentary cameras hit the streets of Raleigh-Durham, NC, to ask how social media influenced the 2012 presidential election; a look at what happens when an entire generation of Instagram users get together with their cameras on the beaches of Santa Monica, California; and how Facebook helped to make a young Los Angeleno boy's dream come true.

Storytelling with a kick! The words, sounds and people that bring poetry to life?a painful story about bullying; powerful memories of a soon-to-be demolished housing project; inaccurate assumptions about a pretty face; coming to terms and acceptance with loss; and the melting pot of identity politics. Five pieces from cities across the USA, including San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis, that are connected by the rhythm of words and the search for identity.